


Unlucky

by popfly



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-05-01
Updated: 2006-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-19 17:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/575947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popfly/pseuds/popfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brian had his share of bad luck, but after meeting Justin his luck changes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unlucky

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the qaf_anon challenge.

Brian Kinney had been unlucky from birth.

Being born to Joan and Jack Kinney would be enough bad luck for anyone, but that was literally and figuratively only the beginning. Brian could remember summer weekends spent at church festivals, watching his father lose quarters then dollars than fives at the dinky games under the flapping yellow and white striped tents, where painted muffin tins could suddenly mean life or death. He could remember his mother grimacing piously down her nose at almost everyone, then sneaking off to the port-a-potties with one hand on the bottle of sherry in her shoulder bag.

Brian and Claire would wait until their mother was drunk and make her buy them pull tab lottery tickets from the ladies that ran the bereavement committee, then they’d squeeze through the crowded music tent to get to the jungle gym or the slide or wherever they could hide and relish the pulling of each tab. Brian would squeeze his eyes shut before tearing each perforated strip from the ticket, thinking of all the things he could do with a hundred dollars.

He’d be thinking of how Sam, the kid from school who wore “Party Naked” shirts and was at least three years older than the rest of the class, had told him that bus tickets to New York were “pretty cheap, y’know, but Greyhounds stink” and then he’d look down at the exposed fruits and his heart would break five times per ticket when there weren’t three lemons in a row. He’d sneer at the neat rows - orange, lime, lemon, dammit - and tear them to bits before throwing them away.

In high school the only bit of good luck that came his way was meeting Mikey, and most of the luck was in having a haven, somewhere he could escape from his own fucking bad luck life. Going to the Novotny household was like finding an oasis in the desert. So much love for someone so thirsty for it. But of course then there were the times when he had to go home, and walking through the front door felt just like looking down at the pull tabs of his early adolescence and finding three mismatched fruits.

After that it was one thing after another. Dreams of New York being dashed once again, this time by a fruit in a suit instead of ones on cheap cardboard, or the moment that stood out most vividly in his mind: the night he met Justin.

He’d thought at that time (after the most boring blow job in history) that turning his head to find a willing, attractive young blond was a stroke of the best kind of luck there was: the kind that ended in at least three mind blowing orgasms. He inevitably turned out to be wrong.

Justin had been the best thing that had ever happened to him, and the worst, all at the same time. How the little shit did it Brian didn’t think he’d ever know.

The prom, the fiddler, the cancer, LA, and then New York. All of the things that happened over the course of their relationship that were constant reminders that that night outside of Babylon was the most monumentally unlucky night of Brian’s life.

Or so Brian thought until the day Justin called him from his studio on a damp night in May, his voice low and sad down the line. “I miss you. I want to come home.”

Brian felt like someone was sitting on his chest, and through the burning desire to tell Justin to just fucking do it then he felt a sharp flare of anger. He had chosen to leave. Not that Brian would have had it any other way but it was Justin’s choice and Pittsburgh wasn’t his home anymore.

He told Justin that much and Justin had stayed silent for a long minute before whispering a defeated “Fuck you” and hanging up the phone.

When Brian knocked on Justin’s door the next day, shifting the strap of his garment bag from one shoulder to the other, he waited with his head down until he heard the creak of hinges and then peered up through his lashes.

Justin’s only response was to laugh. He laughed for what seemed like forever, until he was doubled over clutching the knees of his dirty jeans and nearly crying. “Oh, Brian.”

Brian grimaced and dropped his bag. “Fuck you, okay. I wish I had never fucking met you. It was the worst fucking bad luck night I’ve ever had in my life. You have caused me nothing but grief, and you make me miserable. And I fucking love you.”

Justin hadn’t stopped laughing. He sucked in gasping breaths, looking up at Brian with wet eyes. “I fucking love you too. Come in.”

Brian stayed the weekend, and then the week, and then the month. They found an apartment with a spare room that had lots of natural light, and a space for the new Manhattan branch of Kinnetik. They invited everyone up from Pittsburgh in October to attend their small yet elegant (thanks to Emmett Honeycutt, premier party planner) union ceremony, and bought a vacation home in P-Town the next summer.

They were sitting out on the porch of that home one muggy afternoon when their next door neighbor, another couple from New York that reminded Brian a lot of Ben and Mikey, came through their screen door with their four year old son, Tucker.

“Hey guys!” Jonas, the Ben of the two, called over, waving the hand that wasn’t holding Tucker’s. Brian and Justin returned his wave with matching grins.

“What’re you guys up to today?” Justin asked, sliding off of his chair to meet Tucker at the bottom of the porch steps.

“There’s a festival a couple of towns over and we thought we might take Tucker. Stick him on the carousel and stuff him full of cotton candy.”

Justin laughed. Jonas’s partner Louis came up behind them. “You guys want to join us?”

Justin looked back over his shoulder, a grin still in his eyes. “What do you say, Brian?”

Brian considered a moment before giving in to the fun of the moment and shrugging. “Why the hell not.”

The festival had a carousel and plenty of cotton candy. It also had a crowded music tent and the muffin tin game and a booth where older ladies were selling pull tabs.

Justin was chasing was Tucker around the swing set when Brian strolled away and bought one pull tab. He squeezed his eyes closed and pulled the strip from the ticket.

He could hear Tucker laughing and Justin’s returning chuckle, and an echo of his father’s shouting at the kid running the over-under, and the slur of his mother’s voice and he opened his eyes to look down at his ticket.

Lemon, lemon, lemon.

Justin was suddenly in front of him, holding Tucker’s hand in his, his face flushed red and a huge grin on his face. “What’s that?”

“A pull tab.” Brian’s throat felt dry.

“Oh. Did you win?”

Brian looked from the neat row of lemons to Justin’s smiling, sweaty face. “I did.”


End file.
